Ta Muchly!

those of you not in the UK might like to know that 'ta muchly' is english slang for 'thank you very much'. it is also the name of a business my friend has set up while she has two very small children. her products are lovely - she makes them all while her little ones are sleeping or otherwise engaged.

her website is www.tamuchly.co.uk.

i'd really encourage you to have a look and start stocking up for the rest of the year's birthdays, celebrations and even Christmas while we're at it!!

robin and jos and me are loving it!

here is a video of a woman called totoshko who is a friend of my brother oli. she lived with my parents a bit while staying in cheltenham. anyway, the boys and i were looking at some photos of them while they were staying with my folks a couple of weeks ago and there's one of them with totshko. so we looked her up on youtube and here's her 'moment':

today is wednesday.

if honesty is the best policy then what does it say about our government policies and procedures when honesty seems to be disputed at every point. i've just received some documents through today, regarding the government process that's the bane of our lives (currently), and reading them just reminds me how much our honesty is questioned constantly, refuted and just simply denied. then i even noticed that there was at least one error in the minuting of the document i was reading. sometimes it feels that because the system we are in is so 'day in day out' to the professionals involved, the details aren't important to them and yet when it comes to challenging our 'honesty' they are very quick to jump on the details.

but then i try to hold it lightly in view of the fact that it'll all come out in the wash when God does his laundry - it strikes me more and more each day how ridiculous, and yet genius, it is that God's foolishness is greater than our wisdom. i just love it that God admits that He's foolish (whatever that means) and therefore that foolishness is part of being made in the image of our creator. ooh - what a shift in the way we saw each other if we started to celebrate each other's foolishness!!

if abraham lived today and God told im to go kill isaac, what would he have done, and what would have been the consequences?

on sunday i watched the london marathon round at my next door neighbour'shouse and i sat and cried through a lot of it. the thing that got me was the interviews, when the tv presenter was stopping certain people running and interviewing them asking what they were running for ad how much they were hoping to raise. most people were running because they had been directly or indirectly affected by some kind of challenge/battle and part of their chosen fight was to raise money and run the marathon. this gutted me because in my current battle it's not one i've chosen, it is one that i only believe i can win because i choose to keep trusting God (and if i don't win this battle i choose to trust God in that too). i felt a whole bunch of self pity, grief, deep sorrow and a kind of over-whelming helplessness.

so right now i am putting my hope into the day when the battle i am in ends and i can choose a battle to fight. it has even crossed my mind to choose to fight the same battle agin (but this time on my terms) and perhaps run the marathon and raise money to support others going through what we're going through.

the title of this post isn't there just to be funny. it's really a serious reflection. we look at the story of abraham and isaac and see his amazing faith, his conviction to obey God, God's provision in the light of said obedience. but today? would od still ask someone to do that and what would be the consequences? the child protection procedure is a giant beast writhing around in he lovely multi-aency culture we see ourselves in where using bubble bath on a seriously eczma'd child (becasue you believe God told you to and interestingly washed the eczema away for just over a week) is seen to be a pointer to significant harm/risk. sadly one of many misunderstood actions and words taken to the same end point.

or Lot in sodom and gomorrah who turns out his virginous daughters (likely under 18) to the crowds so that the 'stangers' are spared the lustful desires of the town's men. where do we look at that and reflect on sexual child abuse and the sexual culture of that city in general, rather than banging on (excuse the term) about gay relationships when it has always seemed to me that the story of sodom and gomorrah is much more about hospitality than anything else, which is the context where Jesus himselfs refers back to it (Matt 10:11-15).

going now. enough there to chew on.

here goes...

i am thinking about a few things at the moment. whether i'll blog much about them or not i'm not sure. but one of the things i'm reflecting on a lot is how i feel about the fact that i don't get many comments. you see, i realised that as write a blog and also keep a personal journal, the blog is something i do for others as well as for myself. of course, i like the fact that a blog is always stored on t'internet somewhere so should anyone ever wish to publish my works or write a film about me anything i've blogged will be already archived and nicely ordered and all links will make sense and as it's typed there'll be no hurdles such as my often illegible handwriting - i have taken to writing in my personal journal while people pray for me and i can barely read it myself at the end. however, somehow it makes that praying experience an active one for me when sometimes i've felt quite passive when people have prayed for me - even at toronto (so stone me!).

i think my point is that where i used to feel validated by comments i now feel validated just for being me. i am coming home to myself as naomi aldort suggested to me yesterday. but your comments still mean a great deal to me - they are the relational side of my blogging. if what i was blogging was just for me i'd put it in my personal journal but i put it here for you too - i suppose i hope it might spark discussion, edify you, encourage you, inspire you (did you know that i inspire you? - private joke with the lovely niki foote so noone be offended by my apparent arrogance!). i'm certainly not expecting comments like the blog of the inspirational (and currently bored) andrew jones but then i don't feel my blog deserves that level of following!

maybe a lot of this is linked in with my experience of facebook and why i decided to kill off my profile. even if it is linked it's not the same - facebook really was messing with my experience of being me and who my friends were. i don't miss it at all - but then i am all about relationship, and what's more, relationship that goes deeper than what you're up to on a saturday night and the fact that you wished me a happy birthday because facebook reminded you to! for the first few months i was on facebook i wished people happy birthday as a result of facebook's reminder and then i stopped. i started just wishing happy birthday to the people i would try to wish it to anyway. this, admittedly is not as easy since i lost my address book. but i hope my address book will turn up when we move house.

got to go to diggerland now for jos.

you can't help but feel happy when you soo this...

snow in april. i miss british seasons.

want to blog but feel i have little to say right now. we are just sitting down to watch casino royale with yummy daniel craig. i'm going to carry on doing some knitting too.

lovely jen comes home this month - i am very excited!